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Fires, how do they cease?

There’s a netherworld aspect to living in the box that won’t allow for observation. The nuclear decay device – in this case, purported enriched uranium, actual nuclear weapons-making stuffs – occupies both the need and raisin debt at the center of the conflict. Learn from one thing to understand another, not just another party trick but try it at home. Impress your friends:

On Thursday the White House released long-anticipated draft regulations that, if enacted, would give political appointees the final word on federal research grants and other funding across government agencies.

Scheduled to be officially published in the Federal Register on Friday, the 412-page proposal on federal spending rules would centralize Office of Management and Budget (OMB) control over releases of government funds, including for scientific research grants.

The new rules would mandate political appointees at scientific agencies to sign off on all research awards for compliance with presidential priorities, including those on race and gender.

And at scientific agencies, the proposal states that “senior appointees must conduct these reviews and apply specific principles when evaluating proposals,” a departure from past practice whereby apolitical expert review committees approved research grants.

Many people are saying a clown moved into a palace doesn’t become a king – the palace becomes a circus. This lack of pretense for caring to understand, readily transferable to all policies foreign and domestic, constitutes an undoing and should be acknowledged as such in the strongest terms available. Put people in charge who don’t know what they are doing are defiant in pushing back clocks to yesteryears and suddenly we are all looking around for someone to push back on the madness, to explain in gentler terms that will shake the comfortable from their stupor. The unwelcome news: You are the someone.

The welcome news: you’re more ready than you think. The groundhog day coup d’etat where we wait for new explanations of what’s happening from people media who don’t want one did not emerge from a rift in time. Its origins are a dereliction of responsibility, an allergy to action, against uncomfortable words and calling out ignorance, racism, and misogyny. The Strait won’t open because the vandals handed-over the handle.

Fire with fire, friends. Unless or until then, it’s cognitive tests all the way down.

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Buck Up, Get a Blog, DIY

Juan Cole lays it out for climate scientists:

f. Many journalists are generalists and do not themselves have the specialized training or background for deciding what the truth is in technical controversies. Some of them are therefore fairly easily fooled on issues that require technical or specialist knowledge. Even a veteran journalist like Judy Miller fell for an allegation that Iraq’s importation of thin aluminum tubes in 2002 was for nuclear enrichment centrifuges, even though the tubes were not substantial enough for that purpose. Many journalists (and even Colin Powell) reported with a straight face the Neocon lie that Iraq had ‘mobile biological weapons labs,’ as though they were something you could put in a winnebago and bounce around on Iraq’s pitted roads. No biological weapons lab could possibly be set up without a clean room, which can hardly be mobile. Back in the Iran-Iraq War, I can remember an American wire service story that took seriously Iraq’s claim that large numbers of Iranian troops were killed trying to cross a large body of water by fallen electrical wires; that could happen in a puddle but not in a river. They were killed by Iraqi poison gas, of course.

The good journalists are aware of their limitations and develop proxies for figuring out who is credible. But the social climbers and time servers are happy just to host a shouting match that maybe produces ‘compelling’ television, which is how they get ahead in life.

3. If you just keep plugging away at it, with blogging and print, radio and television interviews, you can have an impact on public discourse over time. I could not quantify it, but I am sure that I have. It is a lifetime commitment and a lot of work and it interferes with academic life to some extent. Going public also makes it likely that you will be personally smeared and horrible lies purveyed about you in public (they don’t play fair– they make up quotes and falsely attribute them to you; it isn’t a debate, it is a hatchet job). I certainly have been calumniated, e.g. by poweful voices such as John Fund at the Wall Street Journal or Michael Rubin at the American Enterprise Institute. But if an issue is important to you and the fate of your children and grandchildren, surely having an impact is well worth any price you pay.

You’re going to get creamed anyway… might as well deliver some hurt as you take it. (Implicit Obama criticism/advice inadvertent but also free!)